Bush warns of Iraq disaster



President Bush in a Tuesday interview expressed in unusually frank terms his disappointment over flawed pre-war intelligence and acknowledged his fears about leaving an unfinished war to a Democratic successor.

In a White House interview with Politico and Yahoo News — Bush’s first for an online audience — the president said his doomsday scenario for a premature withdrawal “of course is that extremists throughout the Middle East would be emboldened, which would eventually lead to another attack on the United States.”

For the first time, Bush revealed a personal way in which he has tried to acknowledge the sacrifice of soldiers and their families: He has given up golf.

“I don't want some mom whose son may have recently died to see the commander in chief playing golf,” he said. “I feel I owe it to the families to be in solidarity as best as I can with them. And I think playing golf during a war just sends the wrong signal.”

Bush said he made that decision after the August 2003 bombing of the United Nations headquarters in Baghdad, which killed Sergio Vieira de Mello, the top U.N. official in Iraq and the organization’s high commissioner for human rights.

“I remember when de Mello, who was at the U.N., got killed in Baghdad as a result of these murderers taking this good man's life,” he said. “I was playing golf — I think I was in central Texas — and they pulled me off the golf course and I said, ‘It's just not worth it anymore to do.’"

In a reversal of the usual question that’s put to him, a query submitted online asked the president whether he felt he had been misled about Iraq as he made the decision to go to war.

‘Misled’ is a strong word, it almost connotes some kind of intentional,” Bush said. “I don't think so. … Intelligence communities all across the world shared the same assessment. And so I was disappointed to see how flawed our intelligence was.”

Congress has since pushed, and Bush has signed, various intelligence reforms, including the creation of a director of national intelligence, whose job it is to help the various parts of the intelligence community share information.

“Do I think somebody lied to me?” he said. “No, I don't. I think it was just, you know, they analyzed the situation and came up with the wrong conclusion.”

Bush warns of Iraq disaster - Mike Allen - Politico.com

And so now we know the rest of the story,well..at least we know why he has not been playing golf and I can understand that.

For the record, write this down and then stow it away on a back shelf in an old cookie jar to be opened in the future when more about the decision to invade Iraq is finally revealed to the public, here is what I believe we will discover.

The Israelis were threatening, behind the scenes, to take out the WMD's themselves and we did not want to risk the possible consequences of what might have resulted from that, so we decided to invade.

And that will be in addition to some other factors which also existed simultaneously. Let's never revert to a "ONE REASON FOR THE INVASION" discussion. There were many reasons and most of them were good ones.

Once again, rather than allowing the Israelis to protect themselves by making a pre-emptive strike on the WMD's we chose to go in instead and in so doing we prevented the possibility of a much larger conflagration which could easily have gotten out of hand.

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Only political parties which support the continuance of the Democratic system should be allowed to obtain power. -- TOT

So we are being drug around by Israel? That sucks.

That was a big gripe during the Eisenhower administration. Every time you heard about the guy, he was playing golf and every time you saw a picture of him and the first lady, Mamie had a new hat. But he presided over a pretty good economy and I guess the Korean War was over by then?

Well, if he thought of it on his own or someone suggested it, I think it was a good decision to give up golf during his presidency. It does send the wrong message when you have to go get the prez off the golf course to tell him how the troops are doing.

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Leave it to you to misunderstand.

In the film, "Casino," the character played by Robert De Niro (Sam 'Ace' Rothstein) was befriended by a tough guy played by Joe Pesci (Nicky Santoro) who you knew not to fuck with.

There were times when Ace had to keep Nicky from going too far.

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Only political parties which support the continuance of the Democratic system should be allowed to obtain power. -- TOT

In the PBS Documentary on the Presidents series episode on GHW Bush he specifically said he made sure NOT to become self imprisoned during the Gulf War because of the terrible image that was portrayed when Jimmy Carter was locked in the White House as a result of the Iranian Hostage crisis.

For what it's worth.

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Only political parties which support the continuance of the Democratic system should be allowed to obtain power. -- TOT

What happens to Nicky?

How can we claim to live in a democratic society, and read that and not have it induce vomitting?

"the decision to invade Iraq"?
That is a decision that belongs TO THE PEOPLE. Not a secret that should be hidden, misrepresented, or sold under false pretenses.

What bhkad is REALLY doing is trying to give excuses for why the Iraq war could have been justified, IGNORING the fact that the REAL reasons that WERE given were pretty much unilaterally false.


"behind the scenes"...
So one has to wonder how somebody like bhkad can make such so a definitive statement as to what supposedly "happened".
Moreover, it was the U.S. who went to the U.N. Where was Israel?

And furthermore, where was Israel's INDEPENDENT analysis which told them that Iraq supposedly had WMDs.
Which it actually didn't.

What this boils down to is now some people are trying to give out an excuse that we went to war in Iraq because SOMEBODY ELSE thought they had WMDs...

The story just keeps getting more and more convoluted!


"most of them WERE good ones"?
THIS reason was NEVER on the table, so it's obviously not on the list in the first place.
WHAT reason that was ACTUALLY sold to the U.S. and/or the U.N. was a "good one".

And a further reason this is absurd is because the Bush administration DID HAVE one MAJOR reason for the invasion.
And now that that one is proven false, NOW they want to balk that we can't have just "one reason"?

Anybody else notice how duplicitous this all is? How much double-talk is going on here?


WRONG!
How dare you lie and claim "we chose" when "we" obviously didn't get to "choose" anything along those lines.
And furthermore, to present an ideal that we went to war to PREVENT SOMEBODY ELSE from going to war just reeks of a mentality that is worse than the reasons that saw the start of World War I.

Toss onto that quotes from Cheney about how the enlisted people "volunteered", and giving the implication that their deaths are somehow more negligible because of it.

Toss onto that quotes from some politicians who have the unwitting gall to try and pretend that THEY share a larger burden for the existence of the Iraq war than do our fighting men and women.

It's positively pathetic!
It's the reason why this president has the unbelievable distinction of having BOTH the HIGHEST approval rating in presidential history, and the LOWEST approval rating in presidential history.
The HIGHEST immediately after 9/11, cause we wanted to have confidence in our leader.
And the LOWEST today, cause we (or at least most of us) now realize that there are precious few reasons to have confidence in our leader.

When the democratic pissing match gets over, it will be REALLY interesting to see McCain be called to task and watch him try to wiggle around a position that is not too judgmental of Bush, yet still be palatable enough for the general population to elect him.

Not entirely true. Pure Democracy is kind of dangerous when dealing with invasion on home soil.
A democratic republic allows the people to elect leaders who can determine action in times of crisis. Trouble is the decision still runs the gauntlet of a popularity contest due to representatives wanting to keep their seat in the next election.
There is always an element of mistrust in dealings not voted on by the general population.
And the political spin on both sides is outrageous.
But we could not protect ourselves adequately if military action in a time of emergency had to be put to a popular vote.
And, although I have many questions about the conducting of operations, my representatives signed on to this. As did a majority of Democrat and Republican congressmen.

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